Monsters Calling My Name
by AmaliaRose
Summary: "Don't say I'm out of touch with this rampant chaos; your reality."


_I linger in the doorway,_

_Of alarm clocks screaming,_

_Monsters calling my name._

_Let me stay,_

_Where the wind will whisper to me,_

_Where the raindrops as they're falling,_

_Tell a story._

_In my field of paper flowers,_

_And candy clouds of long ago,_

_I lie inside myself for hours,_

_And watch my purple sky fly over me._

_**xImaginary—Evanescence**_

* * *

I was never really sure how it started. And I was never really sure exactly what it actually was. Maybe anxiety, maybe stress; the kinds of common ailments that most people face daily. It began as a kind of tightening in my throat. Then it progressed into scratching. Constant scratching on my wrists, my arms and, in rare and serious cases, my face. Never anything scarring, or even anything that lasted more than a day. I figured there was no need to worry.

But then came the thoughts. My constant thinking and over thinking and rethinking and working over. At night, I stayed awake for hours thinking. I would be about to fall asleep and then, out of nowhere, there would be a thought; suddenly I was awake again. The thoughts were sometimes normal. Regular worries and occurrences. And sometimes they weren't. Sometimes they were things that were disturbing; things that scared me so badly, I was afraid to shut my eyes. My imagination ran wild. A shadow here, a noise there and I was inconsolable. The thought of something—someone crawling on my bedroom floor or someone in my house.

Then it grew. These irrational thoughts; spreading into my daytime activities. Soon, I couldn't hardly look into a mirror for fear I might see something that shouldn't be there. Someone that shouldn't be there. I felt prickling feelings as though there was someone behind me when I was alone in my locked house. Before I knew it, I mostly stayed in the corner, watching the rest of the room, looking down the hallway to be sure that no one was coming.

And why should there be someone coming? I live alone. There should be no one in my house. No one in my mirror but me. No one on my bedroom floor. And rationally, I knew this. But no amount of rational reasoning could put my mind at ease, and as my brain became more sleep-starved, my irrational fears grew. I needed to get out. I needed to be free. That clenched feeling in my throat grew and I knew it to be the feeling that comes just before you cry.

I never could bring myself to cry. If I cried, my eyes would cloud with tears and I would be unable to see the ghost that was surely driving my insane.

It was a few weeks before anyone figured out something might be wrong. My older brother visited, and thought I seemed to be acting off. So he visited more and more often, the more sure he became that something was wrong with me. Soon, he was dropping me off at a mental ward, saying that they could help me. Saying that they could make my ghosts go away.

To make things clear, I had never actually seen this ghost. No odd happenings like lights flickering, objects moving or out of the ordinary noises being made. Bu surely, it must be a ghost, because I'm rational. I'm level headed. I've always been the scholar—the student, the one with perfect control. Surely this wasn't me. Surely it wasn't something wrong with me. The thought made me scratch, much to my therapist's interest.

And then, a week later, I was diagnosed. Perfectionism. Despite its mediocre name, it's a real problem for a lot of people. And for some, it's more dangerous than others. Perfectionism, the need to be perfect and to have everything in order, could apparently cause multiple other mental illnesses such as (though not limited to) eating disorders, sleeping disorders, O.C.D., anxiety or stress disorders and depression. It all made perfect sense, when I thought about it. I had always felt the burning pressure to do everything just right. Everything had to be just so, or it drove me insane. And in that moment, I knew that I did need help. I did need to let things go. I needed to put my rationality aside and open myself to a new world.


End file.
